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Chapters (88)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. I
  4. I
  5. II
  6. III
  7. IV
  8. V
  9. VI
  10. VII
  11. VIII
  12. IX
  13. X
  14. XI
  15. II
  16. I
  17. II
  18. III
  19. IV
  20. V
  21. VI
  22. VII
  23. VIII
  24. IX
  25. X
  26. XI
  27. XII
  28. XIII
  29. XIV
  30. XV
  31. XVI
  32. XVII
  33. XVIII
  34. XIX
  35. XX
  36. XXI
  37. III
  38. I
  39. II
  40. III
  41. IV
  42. V
  43. VI
  44. VII
  45. VIII
  46. IX
  47. X
  48. XI
  49. XII
  50. XIII
  51. XIV
  52. XV
  53. XVI
  54. XVII
  55. XVIII
  56. XIX
  57. XX
  58. XXI
  59. IV
  60. I
  61. II
  62. III
  63. IV
  64. V
  65. VI
  66. VII
  67. VIII
  68. IX
  69. X
  70. XI
  71. XII
  72. XIII
  73. XIV
  74. XV
  75. XVI
  76. XVII
  77. XVIII
  78. XIX
  79. XX
  80. XXI
  81. XXII
  82. XXIII
  83. XXIV
  84. XXV
  85. XXVI
  86. XXVII
  87. EPILOGUE
  88. Afterword

Gudrid didn’t turn to see her go. She kept her place on the headland, keeping guard, until the sun touched the western horizon, and her father came to find her.

III

III

010

SCHOLAR AD 878-892

I

I

It was with a glad heart, that bleak January evening, that Cynewulf at last came to Alfred’s hall at Cippanhamm. With Aebbe at his side, Cynewulf had to line up with the other petitioners at the gate to be checked over by the guard, a thickset thegn with a handful of hardfaced warriors. The royal estate was outside the village, and the hall and its subsidiary buildings were protected by their own palisade of cruelly barbed stakes.

The sky was clear, the sun low. There was no snow, but the midwinter frost made the mud hard as Roman concrete under his leather shoes, and the heavy woollen cloaks of the people in the line, musty with a winter’s use, steamed softly.

The cold did nothing to dampen Cynewulf’s spirits. He murmured to Aebbe, ‘In the King’s hall we will be warm.’

‘Nowhere in England is warm,’ the girl said cynically.

Aebbe, twenty years old and ten years Cynewulf’s junior, was dark, compact, wary. She wore a cloak so filthy it was almost as dark as Cynewulf’s own priest’s habit. With her hair matted and pulled back from her brow, she barely looked female at all. But then she had born on Lindisfarena, in a community of fisher-folk eking out a living in the ruins of the abandoned monastery, and had been a refugee from the Northmen since she had been an infant.

‘This is the belly of Wessex,’ Cynewulf said, forcing a smile. ‘There are no Danes here. We really will be safe.’

‘If they let us in.’

‘Have faith,’ Cynewulf murmured.

At last they reached the gate. From here Cynewulf could glimpse the hall itself, the door posts elaborately carved with vine motifs, the gables adorned with horns. It was built according to old pagan traditions, although a crucifix had been fixed above the door. They were nearly there, nearly safe.

But they still had to get past the thegn and his guard.

They reached the head of the line. The thegn was a bear-like man with a tangle of greying beard, and a barrel of a chest under a mail tunic. At his side was a much smaller man in a drab, much-repaired cloak. The skin of his face was a rich acorn brown. This foreigner held a scroll of paper before him that he marked with a bit of charcoal as each petitioner passed. He shivered, seeming to suffer the winter cold more than those around him.

The thegn faced Cynewulf. ‘State your business.’

‘My name is Cynewulf. I am a priest. I grew up in Wessex, where my father Cynesige was a thegn of the then king. I lived in a monastery in Snotingaham, which is in Mercia—’